The House

One of the factors in the decision of buying this house was the amount of work it needed.

When you find yourself thinking about pulling out the hammers and pounding nails on where you live, you need to be honest with yourself: Can I do this sort of work myself? Do I have the time? Do I want to? Can I pay someone to do a good job? Etc.

Lets face it, you live in your house for comfort. If your home is nothing but endless renovation it can do things like end marriages from the stress.

That being said, the work this house needed was half the reason we could bid and buy it. It had two very scary problems that probably chased off a lot of buyers.

The Foundation

It did not take a genius to know the house had a foundation problem. The living room and dining room sloped visibly several inches to the outside wall. A glance down the wall of the house on the outside showed it was leaning several inches out of line and was buckling. The plaster in the house had corresponding cracks.

Normally a foundation issue is a “bone” issue. That is, if a property has “good bones” you can buy it, because a lot of the ugly might just be paint. But “bad bones” you should avoid.

But one thing caused me not to dismiss it outright: there was a visible repair to the shift in the floor. Repair. Singular. A visibly old repair that showed no further signs of shifting or spreading. I may not know much, but that meant things had been stable and for quite some time.

We put our bid in with a rough mental estimate of repairing the foundation knowing that we would get a full inspection of it later and could negotiate or back out on that point if needed.

The Electric

I like antiques. I like old things. I do not like active antique wiring. I have now lived something on the order of 20 years in houses with knob and tube wiring. I’d like to be done with that danger.

Normally, old electric is something you can fix later but this house is special: The entire service is 30 amps, and is fused in 4 runs. That’s something that can run say, a few light bulbs and a TV.

On top of the wiring being woefully inadequate, it runs through the attic and has been covered in loose insulation. That’s a classic fire hazard.

And here’s a look at the fuse “panel” on the porch:

The fuse “panel” in the new house.

The small transformer wired into the service on the upper right is the transformer for the doorbell.

If you look closely on the left side, below the fuses, you see there is a brass knife switch you can pull to kill the circuit.

I have never seen an open knife switch on house electric before. Reach up and grab that and you will be grounding the house service through your body.

Fixing It All

So as part of our bid, we planned of having the electric and foundation renovated by licensed contractors. We got bids for the work and as of today, the foundation is done and the electric is in progress.

More about that soon…